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Diane Fedele, president of the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated is either a liar or among the stupidest women in the United States of America.

By now, many folks will have heard of the mailer she sent out to her group, introducing “Obama Bucks”.

The false 10-dollar note (well, food stamp) shows Barack Obama’s head on the body of a donkey (the symbol of the Democratic Party). Surrounding the image are depictions of fried chicken, ribs, Kool-Aid (c) and watermelon — foods which, here in the U.S., have long been considered stereotypically Black. 

  

In an LA Times article, Fedele was quoted saying,  ”It was poor judgment on my part. It was strictly an attempt to point out the outrageousness of Obama’s statement that he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.” (Because he’s not a dead and White?)

One of her group members, Kristina Sandoval, came up with the patently untrue or embarrassingly naive, “Everyone eats those foods, it’s not a racial thing.”

Fidele’s ridiculous defense “If I was racist, I would have looked at it through racist eyes. I am not racist, which is why it probably didn’t register” didn’t ring any truer.

The thing is, they will probably get by relatively unscathed.Their actions probably won’t hurt their reputations much. They will continue to play the wide-eyed innocents and find people to stand up for them, sort of:

State Sen. Bob Dutton (R-Rancho Cucamonga) represents the area, and his wife, a Latina, is a member of the club.

“I thought it was unacceptable and a failed attempt at humor,” Dutton said. “My wife isn’t taking it personally because she knows the people involved. I called Diane and talked to her and told her it was inappropriate. She is a sweet lady without a mean bone in her body. But we all have to be more sensitive.” 

Even when the opinions of folks quoted isn’t necesarily relevant to the situation. (Because, sorry, Se. Dutton, most Latinas aren’t also Black.)

It sickens me that these women will probably face not prosecution and, likely, very little persecution, or even censure in their community.

“What racism?” people will ask.

But those of us who have been personally harassed with these images before don’t need convincing that these women are so culturally illiterate that they only inadvertantly chose three of the most oft-used stereotypes of African-American cuisine.

I like that they’re free. (Though they didn’t offer to give me any of my $40 back.) I  like the new template options. I hate the actually blogging interface (What can I say? I’m familiar and comfortable with MoveableType.), though it’s still better than the horror on MySpace.

But, now I’ve got to go back through nearly seven hundred posts and check the formatting to make sure there are no errors due to the change over. Grrr.

It’s funny. I rarely post blogs anymore and so often miss out on my readers’ comments. The only reason I opened the blog today was because I was frustrated by the horrible, racist and/or completely clueless comments that have been left on one of the blogs at work.

Since I wouldn’t be allowed to post a blog specifically addressing the issues at work, I’d decided to go ahead at do it here. And that’s when I found the following. I was just as bad, if not worse, than anything posted on the blog at my job.

I deleted it from the post, but have decided to reprint it here because I also “outed” Chuck, the commenter, listing his email address, in a comment of my own.

I draw the line, however, at leaving it out for the casual viewer to read.

Chuck said:

I am in a fit of desperation; confusion, and distrust is all around me, even to th3e point that I cannot help but think, the country is ready for an eye opener. My thinking? It is the predatory lenders that has wrecked the economy of this country, in that no one can save for the future anymore. When your government allows Lenders to charge up to 30 % interest on your loans and pay as much as 81% on your home mortgage then it is time for a change. The only way to make change that will be effective and restore the ability of Americans to save and prosper is to outlaw the Predators. We must do away with the greed of the super rich and restore sanity to our economy or we will be looking like a 3rd world country overnight. And I mean overnight. Germany, just prior to the 2nd world war was economically enslaved by the rich Jews that owned everything and had the German people working all day for a loaf of bread! It is no wonder the Germans rose up against the Jews, and the same thing is happening right here in America, today. They are enslaving the Palestinians, and the U.S. and want to control the world. They have just about accomplished that already! We need to stop the bleeding, but our politicians and so-called religious leaders keep us brain-washed to believe that Jews are God’s Chosen People. That is in my opinion a bunch of hogwash, lest we also believe that God is prejudice? Does he/she/it wear a KKK outfit?? We need to stop the Predators! Chuck

And that’s why I shared his email, folks. I’ll write about the other awful commenters another time.

News spread like wildfire today.

It hit the wire services only minutes after we found out.

Some nightside folks found out from friends at other papers before they even had a chance to come to work.

My company announced that it needs 200 full time, non-union employees to agree to a buyout and for our unions to agree to certain concessions by 1 October of this year, or the newspaper will be sold.

Needless to say, spirits are down.

      This morning, I donated my car to charity. I’d been thinking of doing it for months. The 15-year-old Mazda was becoming a bitch to maintain, and I resented every dollar I had to pay my mechanic to not fix it.

      I decided to give a half-ass try at selling it — just to see if I could. In all honesty, I was ambivalent about handing it off to some poor sucker who didn’t anything about cars, and to that end, I discouraged two potential buyers from taking it off my hands. A third buyer would have been dumb enough to take it, but she was friends with a rude little thug/mechanic who wisely advised her to leave it alone.

      So, less than a week into the two weeks I gave Carly to sell herself were up, I put in a call to one of the many donate-your-car type charities I’ve been hearing about on the radio for the past year or so. The people on the other end were cold and they made the transaction rather complicated. "Fill out our on-line form. We assess your donation and get back to you in a couple of weeks about whether we’ll take it. If we do, we’ll arrange pick a few weeks after that." 

      A second charity was slightly more accommodating.

      I decided not to go with either one of those. I really wanted to donated to a particular group, in any case. I don’t know why I chose them — possibly they were the first I’d ever heard of. But it didn’t seem as if it was going to matter why I wanted to give to them because a week went by without me hearing their radio ad.

      In that funny way that usually only happens in books or movies, I’d actually picked up my phone to call on of the first two charities when a familiar sound drifted out of the radio. I recognized the of the L’chaim commercial’s announcer encouraging all to get rid of their unwanted vehicles in the name of a good cause.

      I was so excited, I nearly dropped the phone.

      I held my breath as waited for her to give the number to call.

      And then I dialed before the commercial was over.

      The woman at the other end of the phone line sounded like she knew her business, while still managing to come off as warm and friendly. She answered all of my questions and came up with suggestions for me to prepare for the hand-off.

      Her next words had me dancing the happy dance: "Can we pick it up tomorrow morning?"

(They couldn’t because I was going to be at work before their driver could make it, but still!)

      That was Monday. Tomorrow, July 14, was my long-time deadline for getting rid of the car.

      I thought I might be a little sad about it all. We Americans, after all, tend to get attached to our cars. If nothing else, I thought I’d be disappointed about not getting anything for all the cash I had poured into Carly.

      In real life, I stayed outside watching, long after the charity rep told me I was free to go. I watched until he loaded Carly up onto a flatbed tow-truck and didn’t go back to my apartment until he was long out of site.

      The whole time I was thinking, She’s your baby now! Better not come to me when she’s giving you a hard time.

       Some people never learn. It’s an unfortunately fact of life. And while life can be difficult enough when you’re the one making the same mistake over and over again, it’s a little bit different when the culprit is a colleague. Their actions might affect you, but you’ve got no control over them. And if you are not particularly close to the colleague, you might also have little or no influence on them, either.

       Such is my situation with Mr. Worst-Case-Scenario. Some of you may remember that he and his wife were trying to adopt a child, but had run into some difficulties. When it looked as if the child they’d thought they were adopting wasn’t going to become their little darling after all, Mr. W-C-S mentioned to another of our colleagues that there was a possibility — worst case scenario — of him and his wife adopting a Black child.

       Though he looked chagrined when he noticed that he and his companion had infiltrated my snug (it was winter and we were outside) and that I’d probably heard the comment, I was pissed as hell for a long time after. He, however, has been extra-friendly to in the two and half years since the incident.

       Funny that today was the first time he offended me anew in that time.

       Today, from across the newsroom, I heard him bellow, "Well, look at the Aborigines! There’s a reason they’re dark!" He was speaking with a reported here, who is an avid surfer. They could have been talking about anything from Australia in general, to sun protection specifics.

       Coming from nearly anyone else, this exclamation would have been curious, but not necessarily potentially derogatory. I probably would assumed he was talking about sun and skin cancer, and then not have thought about it anymore.

       But because it was his voice, my hackles rose and I listened as he went further into the conversation.

       I don’t remember much of what he said because inside my head, I was chanting, "Suntans! Sunscreen! Zinc oxide! Come on, say something to explain yourself so I don’t start hating you all over again."

       Finally, I noticed that he seemed to have veered off topic, he was talking about a National Geographic spread featuring Tour Du France cyclists.

       "I mean, the rest of them were like me — pale white [Note-from-Tara: This man is rather swarthy, actually.], but their legs were pitch-black. I mean PITCH black with their feet and thighs  white."

       Finally, I thought to myself, suntans.

       But some niggling inner-voice still wanted to kick him in the shins: We Black folk come in all shades of dark, but even the darkest of us can’t be compared to pitch. And, it crossed my mind to wonder,  would I have found his words more tolerable if he’d compared his and the cyclists’ skin to bird shit, or if someone else altogether had told the story?

       Why couldn’t this colleague have just kept his mouth shut? I was beginning to see him as a probably a nice, if ignorant and nearly oblivious, guy.

       Coming, as it did, the day after Don Imus stuck his foot in his mouth again, I couldn’t help but wonder at his timing.

       Life is funny. I just reread an old post, "He’s getting married" and the responses it elicited. I found myself chuckling a bit at what I, and everyone else, had to say.

       I don’t know why, but nowhere in that post did I mention that the "love of my life", or whatever I called him there, was the Elf Prince. I guess I figured that any regular readers of my blog would be able to figure it out on his or her own. But that’s not what had me laughing.

       I still remember how I felt that day. Yes, I was supremely happy for him. He’d had a rough deal before he and I got together, and he that our relationship had hurt me and our friendship. He’d felt terrible about that.

       That day, he approached me at the copy machine — I’m pretty sure it was almost first thing in the morning. I stood there listening to him, a happy smile plastered on my face. I even teased him a little as he struggled to talk to me about it.

       The whole time, my mind was racing. Why the hell is he telling me this? I wondered. I mean, why is he approaching me specially to tell me when we haven’t exactly been close friends over the past year. I mean, why Why WHY does he think it’s NECESSARY to tell me personally? Does he think I’m still in love with him?

       I was, of course, still in love with him. I think I probably always will, after some fashion, love him. But, consider two things: I didn’t want him to know how I felt. And I genuinely didn’t have any hopes for the two of us to ever get back together. His decision to take me aside and tell me pretty much dashed any hope I had that he thought I was over him.

       So, I stood there, grinning like an idiot and congratulated him. And when he started to explain, saying. "You know, sometimes things happen when you don’t expect them t–", I quickly cut him off with more teasing. "You mean she proposed to you?

       Because, the only time during our on-and-off-and-on-and-off-and-off-and-on-and-off romance that I’d been the one to end things, I told him that I couldn’t stop loving him and he couldn’t start loving me. And he told me that it wasn’t about me — he’d spent his entire adult life in one long-term relationship after another; he didn’t want that again, he told me.

       "No," I told him. "You don’t want that with me."

       I was right, I knew, because if there was ever a man made to be married, to be committed to one woman forever, it was him. He just hadn’t found the right woman yet.

       It wasn’t long after that conversation that we met the woman who is now his wife, and my first thought was She’s the one!.

       My friends told me I was being silly. One even suggested that the woman might be engaged to someone else, but I was certain. Even though the Elf and I were back together by then.

       So, all of these thoughts were crashing through my head as he told me he was getting married. That, and trying to figure out a diplomatic way to ask him if I’d guessed right about his love (she’d moved halfway across the country not long after we first met her).

    In the end, I just started talking vaguely as if I knew exactly who he was marrying, ended the conversation as quickly as I could, and went back to my desk feeling a bit numb.

       I was cheered, strange as it may sound, to learn that I was right about her identity. (I had to get confirmation from one of my other friends.) And that I could tell my nay-saying friends "I told you so."

       But I didn’t write any of that the morning he told me. He was one of my blog readers and I’d decided he should never, ever, know just how much I loved him. I was happy for him (I didn’t fall into a mess of tears until two days later, and in the privacy of my own home.), and he didn’t need to know that the love I’d written about was still very much in evidence. No wonder so many of my readers called me "strong".

Yesterday, we had a final good-bye in the park. Aunt Jan will drive Nanny to her home in North Carolina sometime next week.

A lot of faces from days gone by were there. Many more were not. Still, considering Gina-sister didn’t really tell many people, just let the news spread via word-of-mouth, I was shocked by the number of folks who turned up.

More amazing still, were the family of tourists who stopped by the pavilion to honor my grandmother. They’d heard just a tiny bit of her story, and what she’d done for the town, and they wanted to shake her hand.

The day was beautiful. Full of tears and laughter and hugs and dancing.

And soon, there will be (almost) none of us left.

I wonder if the town will notice?

It only took over a week’s worth of emails, but my blog was once again accessible through my Friendster profile. After several back and forth emails, finally, someone at Friendster support grasped my problem. While all her predecesors sent me to the blog support folks — even after I’d stressed that the problem wasn’t with my blog — Andrea actually adressed the real situation.

Hello ,

Thank you for contacting Friendster Customer Support.

We apologize for this inconvenience and will submit your case to our engineering department. Unfortunately, we do not have an estimated time frame for a fix. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Regards,

Andrea
Customer Support

Why can’t anyone see anything I’ve posted since Flatterer? Grrr!